Friends!
There are some days that divide your life into before and after.
For me, one of those days happened in July 2022. I was hit by a car.
I don't remember everything about it. Perhaps that's a good thing. Cats are generally very sensible about the past. Humans take old memories out of cupboards, unwrap them, examine them from every angle and then put them back again. Cats prefer to concentrate on more immediate matters, such as whether there is chicken in the fridge. But I do know this: I nearly didn't come home, and when you've nearly not come home, you begin to understand what home really means.
Humans tend to think of home as a building. They spend an extraordinary amount of time choosing paint colours, rearranging cushions and buying decorative objects which cats and dogs are then inexplicably forbidden from knocking onto the floor. But I don't think that's what home is.
I think home is the place where somebody notices you're missing.
It's where your bowl sits in its usual place. It's the blanket that smells of you. It's the familiar footsteps coming down the stairs. It's the voice that has said your name so many thousands of times that you could recognise it anywhere. Most importantly, it's where somebody is desperately hoping you'll come back.
In July 2022, I discovered just how many people wanted me to come home.
Recovering from an accident isn't terribly dignified. There are vets. There are examinations. There are worried faces hovering over you. There are humans asking, "How are you feeling, Malcolm?" approximately every seven minutes, despite the fact that you have never once answered that question in English.
There is also an alarming amount of fuss. I endured it bravely. Obviously.
But something else happened while I was recovering. Everyone became very gentle with me. Hands stroked rather than scooped. Voices became softer. Beds appeared in convenient places. People checked where I was before they went to sleep. And Baby Dog looked after me too. He stayed close. He seemed to understand that something was wrong and that I wasn't quite the Malcolm I had been before.
Dogs have their faults. Many of them. They are noisy. They are overenthusiastic. They consider somebody returning from the supermarket to be an event comparable with the Second Coming. However, when things go wrong, dogs can be remarkably good at simply being there.
Baby Dog was there. I haven't forgotten.
The strange thing about nearly losing your life is that afterwards you don't necessarily appreciate the enormous things. You appreciate the tiny ones.
A warm patch of sunshine. Someone opening a tin. A familiar lap. Rain outside while you're warm inside. Finding that somebody has left a cardigan on the bed and having the good sense to sleep on it immediately.
Another morning. Another dinner. Another ordinary evening with everybody where they're supposed to be.
And I have had four more years of those things since my accident.
Four more autumns. Four more Christmases. Four more springs with sunlight moving across the floor.
Four more birthdays. Four more years of being stroked, photographed, talked to and occasionally subjected to humiliating displays of human affection.
And I got to watch three tiny rescue kittens called Percy, Ron and Cleo arrive and turn my peaceful retirement upside down.
I got to see Baby Dog grow older too.
I got thousands more breakfasts. Thousands more naps. Thousands more moments that nobody thought were particularly important at the time. That's the thing about life. You don't know which ordinary moments you nearly didn't get.
I've noticed that humans spend a lot of their lives somewhere else. Not physically but mentally. They're worrying about Thursday while it's still Tuesday. They're replaying something that happened three years ago while a perfectly good September afternoon is happening right in front of them. They're thinking about emails while someone they love is talking. They're wondering what might go wrong tomorrow while the dog is asleep beside them and the cat is purring on the sofa and, for this particular moment, everything is actually all right.
Cats don’t do that. We live much closer to now. If the sun is shining through the window, we lie in it. If somebody we love sits down, we sit beside them. If dinner is good, we enjoy it. If dinner is late, we make our feelings known immediately. Perhaps humans could learn something from us.
I was lucky. That's the simplest way of putting it. In July 2022, something terrible happened to me. But it wasn't the end of my story. I came home. I came back to my people, my bed, my bowls and my dog and life carried on.
Not dramatically. Beautifully ordinarily. Life happened and I was here for it. Perhaps that's what I would like humans to remember from my story.
You don't have to wait until something nearly disappears before you realise how precious it is. Look around you today. Notice who's there. Notice the familiar voices and the irritating habits. Notice the animal asleep beside you. Notice the cup of tea, the rain on the window, the untidy kitchen, the person calling from another room.
One day, you may look back and realise that these were the moments that mattered. I nearly didn't come home in July 2022. But I did, and every ordinary day I've had since then has been a little bit extraordinary. Although I still maintain that four years' worth of extra dinners could have contained considerably more chicken.
Lots of love,
Malcolm xx